February 16, 2004 Report of the a.o.i.r. executive committee Prepared by Nancy Baym AoIR Executive Committee President: Nancy Baym Vice-President: Matthew Allen Secretary: Ulla Bunz Treasurer: Benjamin Bates Open Seats: Radhika Gajjala and Annette Markham Appointed Seats: Monica Murero and Randolph Kluver Student Seat: Leslie Tkach-Kawasaki Publications Officers: Jeremy Hunsinger and Charlie Breindahl Past President (ex-officio): Steve Jones 2004 Conference Chair: Kate O'Riordan Ethics Working Group Chair: Charles Ess AoIR Annual Chair: Mia Consalvo 1. Introduction & General (Baym) This is the place to find out what's going on in the association. It's long, it's not always thrilling, but it's always the best way for you to keep up so please read it! Our executive committee discussions are summarized in Ulla Bunz's section of the report, 2004 Conference Host Kate O'Riordan provides a Sussex overview in the conference chair report below, Charles Ess keeps us posted on ethics, and Mia Consalvo keeps us up to date on the Annual. All this and more! Read on... 2. Executive Officers' Reports 2.1 President (Baym) 2.1.1 First, I apologize for not posting a report in the last few months (not that I received a lot of inquiries as to its whereabouts!). We were in a minor lull through the holidays and are now back to multiple ongoing threads all day, every day. The main items on our agenda have been the 2004 conference in Sussex which is shaping up nicely (thanks in no small part to the work of Kate O'Riordan and Sheizaf Rafaeli), and getting ready to launch some initiatives (stay tuned for opportunities to get involved!). I've also been appreciating the quality (if occassional wackiness) of recent air-l discussions, which have reminded me of how important aoir is in providing an interdisciplinary and international space for people from diverse perspectives to discuss issues of common concern. Sometimes we talk past one another, but I think that more often we learn from one another. As always, if you have suggestions about how AoIR can improve your life as an internet researcher or have skills to offer the association, please let me know! 2.2 Vice President (Allen) 2.2.1 [Matt sent in no report, but has been actively participating in discussion on exec]. 2.3 Secretary (Bunz) 2.3.1 The exec committee continued to discuss an official proposal for hosting the AoIR 2005 conference. The proposal from another potential host was withdrawn. By unanimous vote (11/11) we voted *in favor* of the proposed host site. The 2005 location will be announced in Sussex. We are in dialogue with the proposed hosting site about further details. We are considering moving to a hired conference management team which would change hosting procedures. More information will be made available once guidelines have been formulated. If you are interested in the 2006 or 2007 conference organization, please get in touch with Nancy Baym any time. Also, the exec continued to discuss the issue of co-sponsorship and joint conferences for future conferences. Final conclusion was that overall we would prefer to continue as the sole association responsible for AoIR conferences though we are open to scheduling conferences back to back with related associations so as to facilitate travel and give people the opportunity to broaden their interests. - The exec discussed conference fees and membership fees, comparing standards in different disciplines and trying to combine conflicting goals (i.e., raising conference fees to keep the financial situation of the association in shape, while hoping to attract researchers from less affluent countries). At this point, no official change in either membership fees or conference fees was decided upon. It is possible that the conference fees for AoIR 2004 will be higher than in previous years, but we expect accommodations to be significantly cheaper, so that total cost should be the same or maybe even lower than for the Toronto conference. Along the same lines, we are considering setting up a support fund for graduate students and people from non-OECD countries. Conference funding issues in general and for Sussex in specific were discussed as well. - The exec discussed whether to continue with the Couch Award to be awarded during AoIR conference and decided in favor. - The exec discussed various hotel-sharing and cross-booking options for future conferences to offer accommodation at cheaper hotels without raising association default charges when not meeting a minimum requirement of rooms booked at the main conference hotel. It appears that two different models can be followed in Europe and in the US, and the exec is open to testing a new model at a future AoIR conference in Europe. - The air-qualitativemethods@aoir.org has been created. Contact Annette Markham for more information. - Jeremy Hunsinger prepared the online submission system, and members of the exec tested it. - The exec discussed AoIR's possible contributions to ASCUS (http://www.ascus.info/) in addition to just putting our logo on their site. We support their cause, but have no content to offer them at this time. - The exec is in the process of discussing the charges for what may become two new working groups. One will concern journals options and one will concern website options. Please watch for further information, as we will request input from both members and non-members in the near future. - Along with conference planner Kate ORiordan and program planner Sheizaf Rafaeli, decided to push the submission deadline back to February 15. - Jeremy Hunsinger reported various spam problems and access problems, but also reported that everything seems to be under control again. 2.4 Treasurer (Bates) 2.4.1 Just finished sending off renewal reminders. Trying to keep up. 2.5 Open Seats (Gajjala, Markham) 2.5.1 Gajjala: nothing much to report - scrambling to meet AOIR deadlines:) 2.5.2 Markham: Contributed to discussions related to current and future conferences, circulated the conference call for papers as widely as possible, focusing on non-academic fields of inquiry, continued to generate interest in the qualitative methods mailing list, and brainstormed with other members of the executive committee about matters related to the net presence of AOIR. 2.6 Appointed Seats (Murero, Kluver) 2.6.1 Murero: I was involved in giving final approvals for the keynote speakers' shortlist, within the conference committee, and on the basis of my previous experience in organizing Maastricht's conference have given suggestions to organizers about opportunities of sponsorships for the annual AoIR conference in Sussex. 2.6.2 Kluver: I have been participating in exec discussions thoughtfully, if not loudly! Nothing more to report. 2.7 Student Seat (Tkach-Kawaski) 2.7.1 * Drafting brief e-mail report to grad students through the grad student list (to go out in about two days). * Participating in discussions regarding the web-site. 2.8 Publications Officers (Hunsinger, Breindahl) 2.8.1 Hunsinger: I've been working peripherally on conference matters as necessary. charlie and I have been working very hard to manage spam and virus's and let me assure you that any spam or virus that seems to come from aoir.org most likely does not originate from our servers, likewise with spam. other than that, I've been participating in exec deliberations and other business. 2.8.2 Breindahl: Jeremy and I have spent lots of time fighting worm-generated mail. MIME e-mail is no longer posted directly to the list, but held in a queue for closer scrutiny. We strongly recommend posting in plain text. Took part in various executive committee discussions as usual. 2.9 Past-President (Jones): I've been working on getting bids from conference management agencies for the purpose of planning and executing future AoIR conferences. 2.10 2004 Conference Chair (Kate O'Riordan) 2.10.1 Internet Research: 5, 2004 Keynote Speakers We are very pleased to report that Sara Kiesler and Nina Wakefield have confirmed that they will attend as keynote speakers for IR:5. We look forward to their contributions to what promises to be an exciting conference. Submissions We have received over 360 abstracts in response to the call for papers. The programme chair Professor Sheizaf Rafaeli and a team of reviewers are currently working on these and we should be able to confirm papers and develop the programme in the coming months on the basis of this enthusiastic response. Registration Some budget details are still being ironed out, but we hope to have registration details online before Easter. Challenges and Help We are keen to encourage more volunteers to help with any aspect of the conference planning. Please contact us if you feel you could contribute. Volunteers for reviewing and other programme roles can contact the programme chair. Practical issues, contributions to the web site and onsite volunteers can contact the conference chair. Fund raising also continues to be a significant challenge. Thanks Many thanks to all the people who have contributed to the conference so far; especially those who continue to contribute to the conference planning list (aoir-meet) and those of you who have volunteered to help with the reviewing. Thanks also to the people at the University of Sussex who've put in so much hard work. I look forward to continuing to work with you all as the planning progresses. 2.11 AoIR Ethics Working Group (Charles Ess, Chair) 2.11.1 The AoIR ethics working committee has discussed a recent case/study kindly provided by two AoIR members. Several lessons emerged from the case/study and our discussion - two of which bear mention here. One, significant problems can be avoided ahead of time if participants in a multi-disciplinary research project spell out and discuss in detail their methodological assumptions and ethical practices regarding publication of research data. (In the case we examined, two different disciplines involved in the research project, it turned out, had more or less opposite views on this point - leading to difficulties _after_ much of the project had been completed, IRB approval received, etc.) Two - our discussion further illustrated the differences among us with regard to what we mean by "case study" (!). For some of us (included Ess as a philosopher), a case study can remain relatively general: for others, a case study is necessarily much more finely detailed. The problem is that in this instance - as in previous cases brought to the committee for discussion - the understandable request for more detailed information put the authors of our case in the unpleasant position of having to say 'no' to such requests. For a host of reasons, including issues of professional courtesy and confidentiality, our colleagues were not able to provide us with additional information, leaving the committee's discussion somewhat stalled in mid-course. The lesson learned: our project of collecting case studies that would help provide a kind of positive analogue to case law (that might help researchers develop their proposals and negotiate with their IRBs or equivalent oversight authorities) will have to be modified. The good news: we can still solicit from AoIR members more general accounts of their experiences that focus on "Ethical tips / lessons learned" in developing research proposals and negotiating with ethical oversight authorities. On behalf of the committee - we look forward to receiving these from you! -- Charles Ess 2.12 AoIR Annual Editor (Mia Consalvo) 2.12.1: The first volume of the AoIR Annual is in the final stages of camera copy proofing, with the index now completed (thanks Leslie!) and final errors corrected. It goes to the printer February 20 for production. The second volume of the Annual is still in planning-- Matt and Mia are still reading through submissions- there were over 120 papers to consider, and due to a large volume of excellent manuscripts, decisions are difficult. We estimate that we will be notifying everyone by the end of this month (February 28)-- and sorry about that delay.